


the night the beloved body

by toujours_nigel



Series: Hadestown works [1]
Category: Hadestown (Musical)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, chock full of Olympians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2800340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone in her mother's garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [filia_noctis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/gifts).



> Little one, for you all the songs I can't sing, all the stories I can tell, all the ways in which we make meaning.

Her Momma tells her, “Girl, these things happen.”

Well, no. Point of fact, no she doesn’t. If Persephone were fool enough to go talk to her Momma about these things, about anything to do with her life beneath, Demeter would probably sneer and say she _knew it would come to this, baby why dontcha come on back home, I’ve got your room set up right the way you left it, come on back home and forget that bastard even exists, just stay here all year round_. And then she’d tuck her in with a cup of hot chocolate, like Persie’s still about twelve and not a married woman with power of her own, and set off to beat sense into her littlest brother. Given those two share a temper if nothin’ else, only way that’d end would be murder, and there’s plenty of places to hide bodies, above and beneath.

It’s tricky, talking to her Momma about her husband and to her husband about her Momma. They’re too much alike, for all there’s near ten years between the two of them. Though really they’re all mad, all of them, Uncle Zee and Auntie H living and loving and fighting up in the mountains, Uncle Don living like a beach-bum even with all those pearls hidden away everywhere, and the cousins. Well, hell. The less said about them the better. It’s a sad comment on her life, really it is, that Persephone’s the sanest of the lot, even if there was such a great lot of talk about her marrying her Uncle. He’s never felt like it, really, but then Momma and Auntie Tia are so much older and sensible-like, their brothers and sisters just read a lot younger, and Persie’s the oldest of the kids, so there ain’t much more than fifteen years anyway, between her and Hades, and that’s not so much, when you’re in love. And he’d been away when she was a kid, so it’s not like they’d ever connected that way, like it would be strange if she went to bed with Uncle Don, he’d just been there one day, standing outside of Momma’s garden wall, and Persie’d stared and stared and just _wanted_ him so badly she could hardly breathe, and then he’d come up and grasped her between his hands and that’d been that, all without a word spoken.  Just like that, like all the stories of Uncle Zee and Auntie H, though really that was strange in a way that left a bad taste in the mouth, that marriage and the way they justified it, the way Persie justified hers. And the way Uncle Zee looked around a little too often, and did things without much speaking of them. And the way Auntie H got about it, when she saw him with some girl.

The way Persie’s getting. The way her husband had been staring at that girl in his newest watering-hole, _Cocytus_ ; the girl he’d dug up from nowhere-land and set up with her own bar. Persie doesn’t even know her name, and she’s the hands-on type, learnt that from Momma before she learnt her letters, on your knees with your hands in the dirt, that’s the only way to make your garden grow. Ain’t nothing she doesn’t know about life beneath, ain’t much she doesn’t know about life above. Except this girl’s name. Her name, her name, Persie needs to know her name, try and think of her as a human being and not do any of the things to her that Auntie H would do if it were her in Persie’s shoes, has done when it was her in Persie’s shoes. The things that Persie wants to do.

 

She goes to _Cocytus_ one night when Hades is away looking after _Lethe_. Not Persie who likes nothing better than sunshine and the sweet smell of good soil, but Persephone who walks in the dark, who is light in the dark, who is queen in the dark. Never ceases to surprise her how they know it, any time she walks in the doors, who she’s decided to be. They do, unerringly, every time. Girls she’s pulled shifts and carried plates with lower their eyes and their heads and step away, men who’ve laughed and asked her for a dance bow and scrape their chairs from her path. The girl in the green dress sitting at the piano keeps playing. Whoever was singing has had better sense, and having swallowed her song, now puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder. A hard hand, turning her around. Turning her to look at Persephone, who wants nothing better than to blast her to cinders, bury her in one of Hades’ mines, turn her into a diamond and set her in her crown.

She’s got a diamond resting in the hollow of her throat, a tiny chip of a thing like a bead of sweat between her collarbones, like a pin fastening an invisible cloak. She’s got skin so pale it hurts the eye to look at her, milky white like a pearl or an overcast sky, like the whey they skim off milk in the morning, bare all the way up to thin shoulders. She’s got hair fair like the gold they mine in the mines in Hadestown, like the sun when Paulie goes riding in the mornings, glittering under the lights like Ditty’s favorite belt that makes men fall in love. She’s got long lashes and green eyes deep-set in her pale skin like coming upon deep pools in the ice lands, like a flash of life in the desert. She’s got a pair of lips like the first blush of love, like rose-petals unfurling, like the curve of a well-strung bow. She’s got a dress of green to match her eyes, like a sheaf of leaves stitched together, like a well-watered plant in the love-light of the afternoon. She’s got a throat that’s tender like a child’s, downy like the skin on a herb struggling to see sunshine, working like she’s got something to say.

Persie smiles at her, big like she means it, big like she wants to bite the arteries outta her throat. “I wanted to come visit my husband’s newest acquisition,” she says, voice even, still smiling while her cheeks ache. “I’m Persephone.”

The girl stares at her till her singer tips her carefully into a curtsy, the hand on her shoulder gripping her tight and pushing her down, spine straight, knees bent, like a bucket into a well, like a coal-cart into the mine. She comes up with lowered eyes, only beginning to be afraid. “My name’s Minty,” she says, and dips her head like a flower withering on its stalk.

Persie, well, she knows what’s in her blood, no point in arguing that, and obeisance makes her feel immediately better, like the world has righted itself and her place in it is still secure and all things are as they ought to be. She sweeps past Minty and takes her place at the piano. It’s a new one, perfectly in tune, and fails to be discordant even when she stabs at the keys at random. (Persie is Paulie’s utter despair, she’s got a passable singing voice but that’s about it, but hell compared to Paulie they’re all kinda disasters.)

The girl, Minty _Minty_ she came here to know the name, no point disregarding it, says, “Would you like a song, Lady?”

 

By the time she goes back home, a new shift of workers has headed to the mines, to the mint, to man the long railroads that bridge life beneath with business above, and the old shift has trudged to _Cocytus_ and must be trudging into _Lethe_ , _Acheron_ , _Phlegethon_. In _Cocytus_ they sing, in _Acheron_ weep, in _Phlegethon_ rage, in _Lethe_ drink to forget. Into _Styx_ they do not venture, none of the workers, beyond the first time when the trains stop at the far bank and the ferry brings them over; _Styx_ is her husband’s own domain, where he goes for conversation with his friends who could venture above if they chose and sometimes do, but choose to live beneath. Persephone visits it twice a year, coming and going: brings Hecate autumn leaves when she returns, wreaths of russet and red to crown her; takes spring flowers from Hermes when she leaves and holds his hand while Charon takes them up above.

She goes home and stands before her silver mirror. Before she left she had dressed carefully, dragged all the splendor with which her husband has endowed her from their places, the careful wrapping that preserves the luster of silver, of silk. In the end she had worn black the color of darkness in the deepest mines, no points of illumination on her, no light, no ornaments, a long fall of black cloth against her skin. It would look ascetic above, but here in the world beneath it is the badge of power. Hades wears black, only black, save on the first day of spring and the first day of autumn, when he dresses to please her. Persie wears black when she sits in judgment, when she is angry, when she is lonely, when she wants to feel his arms about her in an embrace of cloth. Standing before her silver mirror now she is alone among her things. Hades is not present in her mind, no phantom hand presses warmly between her shoulder-blades. She strips off the dress and looks at herself.

She looks nothing like the girl. She looks like her Momma, some, and some like her aunts. A bit like Uncle Zee, but not overmuch. Skin dark like the newly-furrowed earth; eyes dark like the wine-dark sea; hair dark like storming clouds; mouth dark with secrets and bright with smiles. She does not look tender. She does not feel it. She feels unyielding like rock that the rains have not changed in a hundred years. She feels angry. She feels like a man would who has won great honor and sees it slipping through his fingers. She feels like a woman who has given her life to her husband and sees him looking at another girl. Like Auntie H must feel, must have felt all that time Persie was rolling her eyes and calling her _dramatic beyond belief I mean it’s just looking_. With Uncle Zee it was never just looking, any rate, and even Hades looking at any other woman even the thought of it makes the blood beat against her skin and sets it throbbing like a good drum skillfully handled. There’s plenty of places to hide bodies, beneath and above.

Hades walks with a quiet step, here among the dead things, the things that can hear breath and life a league away. He is in her room before she can turn at the sound of his step hesitating at her door, his knuckles rapping perfunctorily at her door. He is not a giant, her husband, like his uncles or her mother’s, but a kingly dread cloaks him here among the forgotten, the dead-in-memory. When she met him first in the gentle light of her mother’s garden she had simply thought him handsome. In the silver light of her chambers, the silver pool of her mirror shows a tall man, austere in his sartorial choices, grave in manner even unto melancholy, and beautiful with it all, enough to make one weep. There is the quiet suggestion of a crown among his curls, and an unbecoming air of diffidence in the way his hands ghost over her shoulders, touching her body only through the displacement of air between his skin and hers.

He only says, “You’ve had a busy day.” He sets his hand on her back, between the wings of her shoulder-blades that long for his touch, and stoops to smile against her shoulder.

“I met your newest _acquisition_ ,” she says, and smiles at his reflection before turning to meet his eyes. “I hear she’s half-way in love with you, Lord.”

Always, between them, there has been honesty. Even when it hasn’t been kind, even when it’s been downright savage, when he’s held her between his hands and sworn on everything above and beneath that he’s never going to let her go, even when she’s taken pomegranate seeds from his plate and eaten them one by one while Hermes stood watching, always, always honesty. It’s the root, the bedrock of their marriage.

The bedrock of their marriage and now she can see the lie lurking in his drowning deep eyes. But he looks at her, and he smiles at her, and he presses her closer to his body with his hand on her back, and kisses the hair that springs from her brow in a widow’s peak, the tilted angle of her cheekbone, the determined curve of her chin. He puts his mouth to her ear and he murmurs, “She only wants me for my car.”

She rears away from him. Strikes out, hits his shoulder with her fist, stands panting when he catches it lazily when she raises her hand for a second blow, body twisted away from him. He is laughing at her and saying something, and she can hear nothing over the beating of blood—oh, such blood, his and hers, a touch richer than the rest—in her ears. This, she thinks distantly, is how her cousins feel, in battle, in the hunt. She could kill him now, even here in his place of strength. _His car_ , he says. His car.

She thinks, _he is afraid_. It doesn’t give her joy. Her husband should be unafraid, here in his wife’s chambers, here where he is king, everywhere. But he is afraid now, and cannot meet her gaze. She says, ‘You could give her the car.”

“She isn’t worth that much,” he says. He says, “Persephone, it’s a joke. Persephone, you’re my _wife_.” He says, rising to anger, letting go of her, stepping away, burning cold with fury, “I’m not my brother, Lady.”

“No,” she says, and turns away to sit on her bed, arms wrapped around her knees. It’s a child’s pose more than a woman’s, and Persie’s careful to look a grown woman hereabouts, but she wants her mother’s arms around her something awful, and that lovely, sunlit home and the spreading fields about it dotted with men and women she’s known from childhood, and to wander in the woods with Missy and go on drives with Paulie and sit in Auntie Tia’s kitchen for hours and go carousing with Dio and deep-sea diving with Uncle Don. All the world above keeps calling out to her, even with a month to go till she’s supposed to leave, all the joy to be found among living, breathing things.

“No,” Persie says again, very young all of a sudden, and very cruel, unthinking with it the way children are and all of her kin. “But you are his brother, Lord.” The mirror fogs with his breath. He pants like a bull before it, held to silence by her uplifted hand. “You are a King, and cruel as a King, your laws are stronger than steel, encircling walls, you speak and the beautiful earth is gutted, you speak and walls are raised, you speak and men fall in step. All your machines are set to work from your thought, and from your speech the laws of the underworld spill, the world beneath the happy feet of people living in ignorance, in bliss. Your mines are peopled by the starving poor, the singing poor, and the work you put in their hands and the food you put in their bellies strikes them dumb, turns them numb and still yearning for home. But they can’t go above, they can’t go back, it’s a one-way track, to Hadestown.”

“I give them work, and I give them wages. I give them food and they cry because their full bellies stop their mouths. They cry endlessly, above about lack of work, beneath about a plenitude of it. They want laws and freedom, death and life, all at once, and then they complain when I give it them.”

“You give them life in death and endless sorrow. You give them work and wages and wine to spend it on and women to wait on them and to sing. You give them laws and you set them to building walls and you set them free in chains. You are their Lord and they worship your name. You are their King.”

“But not yours.” He circles the room, the bed, and sets the length of his body sprawling on one of her straight-backed chairs in an imitation of ease. It doesn’t suit, the chair or the room or him. Or her.

“You’re my man and I love you as any woman can love her man, but you ain’t the boss of me and I don’t gotta stand for it if you make eyes at a girl and I ain’t gonna stand it if you look at a girl whose heart is brimming over with love for you and pretend she just wants your car. You’re not my King; I’m free to go.”

He puts a hand out towards her, and then stops, sets his feet firmly on the ground and shifts his body straight, sits like he’s in judgment, King Hades now in very truth and not her husband who grows her silver flowers of asphodel because daisies don’t do so well in his lands. “You can leave only when it’s time for spring.”

Persie, well, she laughs at that, can’t really help it, for it’s funny for all that it ain’t. Hades, her husband, here among the dead things and the dead folk, here in this unchanging dead land that he mines for his riches, he forgets that the world above is different, that it changes, blooms and ripens before it withers, forgets that it’s a big world and not all of it comes to life all at once, forgets that only half the world grieves with her mother and the other half with her husband, that even now it is forever summer in some lands and just because she stays with him half the year doesn’t mean that she’s bound by those words, that she can go when it is time for spring and that it is always spring when it is time for her to go.

She gets up outta bed, he looks so miserable sitting there all bones and brown knuckles and skin stretched tight over his clenched jaw and clenched hands, and goes over to him, stands before him skin clad and pulls his head to rest against her shoulder, his mouth ghosting breath over the peaking swell of one nipple. His hair is coarse with curls under her stroking hand and catches at her fingers the way his arms come up to catch at her skin, encircle her waist. He dips his head down to kiss the tender skin beneath her breasts, up to kiss between them, and sighs a little contented sigh when she pushes him back down with her hand in his hair, and mouths at her nipple.

He makes her knees go weak. He always has. Those first days when she was new to the gloom and longing for home, even then when she was fresh out of tears from all the weeping she’d done for her mother, he’d come into her room and her breath would catch and her blood quicken, he’d smile at her and she’d want to throw discretion aside and jump him while he sat in full splendor in his court; the first time they fucked was barely out of sight of her home, rutting desperately in the shadow of a tree, of a train, of every alcove and hollow place above and beneath as they ran: the show they must’ve given Paulie, she still shudders to think, no wonder he withheld information till things got real bad.

He puts his hands on her hips and draws her away from him just enough that they’re not clutching like they’re children, like they’re scared, and kisses her skin in trembling arcs of hot breath and a hint of teeth. He kisses her till she’s shuddering, runs his thumbs over the hollows at her hips, his fingers over the curve of her buttocks, his mouth over her breasts and sides and stomach till she’s wet with wanting him, till her knees are buckling under her weight and it would be easy, so easy, to forget it all, just shelve it. These things happen.

She wrenches his head away by the hair from where he’s suckling her, her hand tight in his curls, nails digging into his scalp, and says, “Minty, can she go above?”

He says, “She can. Tomorrow, she’ll be gone. I’ll send her the minute I get outta bed. _Tomorrow_.” His voice is a match for hers, is as wrecked as hers, as hoarse with love, his eyes heavy-lidded with desire. He doesn’t look stern now, doesn’t look austere, Hades King of stone and steel, wall and street, mines and long railroad tracks. He looks like her husband, like the brother of his brothers.

She kisses his curls, his brow, his temples, cheeks, jaw, the cleft of his chin, the bridge of his nose, the curl of his mouth. She runs her hands over the strength of his shoulders, the lean muscle of his arms beneath the black layers of his clothes, the length of his throat tipped back for her touch. She kisses his mouth like she’s starving and like she’s storing up against starvation, and steps away from him, out into the centre of the room before he can grasp her between his hands and pull her down onto his lap.

He doesn’t look at her when she speaks, sets his hands on the arms of the chair and holds on like he ain’t too sure what he’ll do if he’s not. He inclines his head while she’s speaking to indicate attention, and then deeper when she’s done to indicate acceptance, resignation, despair.

She says, not quick like she wants to but as steady as she can make it, “Spring’s coming early this year.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a long ride home. Persie has gone back to her mother’s house many times, many years, but she hasn’t gone so early since that first time. She hasn’t thought of it as _home_ since the first time.

It must show on her face. It silences Hermes, who she doesn’t rightly know, who was a child when she was a girl and he came hunting down beneath for her safe behind the shield of his father’s promises. He’s quiet now, his jaw squaring under the thatch of brown hair, grey eyes somber when usually he looks as though he is forever on the edge of a joke. He does let her fold him up in her arms, as awkward as any of them have ever been, nearly as bad as Stu, and shocking somehow to her. The difficult age, when he’s turning from the affectionate boy into who knows what sort of man. He’s tall now, chin resting atop her head and shoulders broader than last time and hands shockingly large on her shoulders; he won’t be as big as Uncle Zee or Rizzo, but in another year or two, another meeting or two he’ll be bidding fair to beat Paulie or Dio. Another year or two and he’ll be a man.

Persephone, in a year or two, will still be as she’s ever been. Still a woman split in half, a daughter six months and a wife the other half-dozen. Always waiting to leave, waiting to return, never still. She touches the flowers he’s brought her, crushes the petals under her hands. They stain her palms pink, purple.

They climb off the platform onto the train, a small, posh affair compared to the long shabby lines of carriages that regularly trundle down the other way. So few people ever go above. Only Thanatos with any regularity; sometimes Kate, sometimes Hades; Persie once a year. Hermes settles long-limbed across three-quarters of a seat; Persie shoves his feet off and curls up in the remainder, he retaliates by putting his feet on her lap for all of a second and then thumps them onto the floor, the wings on his sneakers trembling like the real thing.

Minty, on the seat opposite them, looks at her feet. She’s been quiet all day, though it ain’t as though Persie’s been exactly voluble herself. She’s got enough money that she can pay Minty the same wages Hades was, and Dio and Paulie between them can employ her easy as anything, and if all else fails she can ask Missy or Ditty or even her Momma, though that last she’s aiming to avoid. And there ain’t anything the girl could’ve said in objection without saying too much of the wrong thing; she hasn’t got family to speak of, Minty doesn’t, and a job is a job is a job, thassall. And to object to going above when it’s offered freely with no gap in wages, well, that’d be as good as a signed confession. So she just sits quietly, a duffle bag stuffed under the seat, and looks at her feet. Her skin looks pallid in the light, like she hasn’t been above in near enough to forever to make no nevermind. Persie tells herself this’ll be good for the girl, but it doesn’t even come close to convincing her in her own head, much less anyone else. It’s not as though she’s doing it for the good of the girl, only to punish her husband a little and mostly for the good of Persie herself. She’s enough her family’s child to admit that to herself.

In a little over an hour they are coming up above, out of the ground. It’s cold, still, chill in the air and frost on the ground. The world hasn’t caught up with her decision yet.

Hermes catches her looking around, beginning to frown, and says, “Paulie’s been out earlier and earlier since we had word, and Auntie Terry’s been going at it all hours of the day in her garden. You’ll have your homecoming all right, cuz.”

She reaches out and pats his head. His hair is coarse under her hand, thick twisted curls matted down. He’s the youngest of the lot, never really known her when she was at home with her mother all year round, never known the world above when it was always summer everywhere. He might have seen it, when he was a baby, but snow is normal for him, and the dimming and brightening of the sun, the gathering of clouds, veils of fog descending and unraveling in autumn. The first time she came back, she found out that Paulie’d been violently ill, feverish nearly the whole time she was gone; and Dio had started drinking one week in and never really stopped; and Uncle Don had woken up to find dead shoal of fish stranded on the beach; and Missy had spent months trying and failing to save her pets. The first winter, the first time it had been so cold, and who knew how many had died and her Momma, her Momma who was the kindest and most generous woman around, who ran soup-kitchens and fed people who were outta jobs or money, who set up stalls at the market and gave her produce away for free, her Momma hadn’t cared a hoot, just so long as it let her show her grief, just so long as it got her Persie back. And Persie, who had been wilting away beneath, feeding off love and food that had to be carried down every day for her on the trains, new everyday and untainted by the world beneath, who had spent months longing for her mother’s home and the sunlight in her mother’s garden, Persie had eaten pomegranate seeds off her husband’s plate, just so that she could come and go. They ain’t much given to kindness, Persie and her people; they can blast the worlds to bits if it’ll get them what they want, what’s one little life to all of that? Besides which, a job is a job is a job, thassall, and Minty will do just as well above as below.

 

The sky goes blue from its frosted white, and then a darker blue, purple, pink shot with gold by the time they’ve drawn to a stop. Paulie’s dawdling outside the station in his convertible, a bright gaudy gold that ought by rights be out of place, a moving spotlight of a thing that turns its surroundings into a stage. He vaults the door and comes bounding up, aiming a well-telegraphed clout at Hermes, and taking Persie by the hands, swinging her around. Around them flowers bloom, leaves bud and uncurl on the trees, bird swoop in and start singing. Grass pushes up between the flagstones, and a root snakes through, cracking them.

Persie’s dizzy when they stop, and laughing in great whooping peals. “Take me home to Momma,” she says, and picks her way through the new grass over to the car. When she looks back, Paulie’s staring between Hermes and Minty, brows beginning to pucker in a frown. “Oh, that’s Minty. You’ll like her, she plays the piano.”

Minty starts at the sudden attention, tries to sink back out of the sun, into shadow. Too long beneath, maybe no time at all above. Paulie smiles at her blindingly even in profile from where Persie’s watching, and slowly the girl comes forward, clutching hard onto her bag, slowly like a plant putting forth tendrils blindly seeking sunlight.

“I always need pianists,” Paulie says, amiably escorting Minty up the path. “Can’t seem to hold onto any long enough.”

Minty offers him a tremulous smile, and ventures, “I don’t know if I’m any good, Lord.”

“We’ll try you out. I’ve got a new singer. Marvelous voice, can charm birds outta their trees.”

Paulie puts Minty and her bag into the front passenger seat and folds himself in behind the wheel. Hermes shoots an extremely knowing look at the back of his head, shrugs and climbs in. Persie looking around, closing her lips tight against a grin fit to burst, swings the door open and shut with great finality, and leans back in the leather embrace of the back seat, warmed by the sun and well-content. The drive into the sunset is well-punctuated with talk of music, scales, the demerits of pianolas versus piano fortes, and impromptu songs. Hermes rolls his eyes and launches outta nowhere into a lecture about lyres that makes Paulie actually stop the car and swing around to clobber him.

 

Demeter in her garden is a balm to her daughter’s soul. The world rights itself in an instant, grows warmer, lighter, lovelier. Persephone is outta the car before she knows it, stumbling, racing, flying over the distance between them to gain the safety of her mother’s arms, which close around her tight enough to make breathing a problem. This, her face tucked into the crook of her Momma’s shoulder, the garden blooming around them both, is one of the best times of Persie’s year; only her return beneath compares and the way Hades catches her up. Her mother and her husband, and there are times when Persie sorta resents that being pulled into half, but this moment’s nothing of the sort, never is, never never. Her Momma’s sweet skin smells like sunshine on good soil, and like all the good things growing, like every fruit Persie’s ever eaten and every flower she’s ever put her nose to, like bread rising warm in the kitchen and cold water taken from a well. Her eyes are like rich olives and her hair curled like the tendrils of good-growing vines.

For a long time, Persie can only say, “Momma,” again and again. _Momma, Momma, Momma. I missed you, I missed you something awful._

By the time she disentangles, Paulie’s reaching ’round for a hug, stroking hands down her Momma’s back and whispering something about, “I’ll see you tonight Auntie Terry,” and Hermes is shuffling from one foot to the other, and saying about the same, only without words in the eloquence of his awkward desire to be off.

And then they’re gone and there’s Minty left standing and staring at Persie’s Momma, and Persie’s Momma, looking more and more terrible every second staring at Minty. “You’ve brought a friend,” her Momma says.

Before Minty can blurt anything, Persie says, “Yes, Momma. D’you know she’s never been above? Thought I’d show her about, try and get her a job, take her back with me if nothing suits her. Paulie’s already asked to see how she plays.”

“Well,” Momma says, clearly trying to hide her annoyance at having to share her time with Persie, “that sounds just fine, baby girl. Come on in, both of you; better rest up before dinner time. I’ll have the girls bring up some food, you look right about famished.”

Minty hesitates just one second, but that’s quite enough most of the time, hesitates and dips a curtsy and says, “Thank you, Lady.”

Demeter narrows her eyes at the polished speech, the curtsy that someone’s taken pains to teach the girl, and then shrugs elaborately, her big shoulders rolling, and gestures them both inside. Sometime, like as not sometime soon, Persie’s gonna have to explain a whole parcel of discomfiting things, but not just yet. Persie’ll take whatever she gets, a bit of respite, time to breathe stabilize re-order her thoughts: she’s all kinds of good at thinking on her feet, at landing on her feet, but she needs a few minutes, hours with her feet firmly planted on the ground before she can rightly know what path to turn her steps onto.

She bathes and dresses herself in an old cotton frock, the brightness leeched from it by years of summer wandering till the pink flowers and the white base seem to melt one into the other, leave her looking like a rosebud that’s refusing to open all the way, ties her hair back into a single heavy braid swinging all the way down to her hips. While she was in the bath a girl had come to her with a pitcher of iced tea and stayed to share gossip and pull her hair carefully outta the hundred cornrows she’d had it put in the last few days she stayed beneath while arrangements were being made for her return. Hades, he likes to sink his hands into her hair, tuft it in his hands, weigh it like so much cotton, so much cloud-stuff, brush his mouth over errant curls and twist them round and round his fingers. At home with her Momma she always wears it in a braid, loose enough to let curls snake out, neat enough to be outta her face when she’s gotta work.

“Dinner’s gonna be some time coming,” she tells Minty, meeting her at the foot of the stairs. “It’ll take them all some time to get here, and Uncle Don will throw an awful big fit if we don’t all wait for him.”

Minty goes pale, clutches onto the banister like her knees have decided all on a sudden to stop carrying her weight. “ _All_ your family, Lady?”

“As much of it as can get here or face Momma’s wrath,” Persie says, and checks herself. Oh, well, it does take some of them that way, but with this girl Persie hadn’t thought it’d go like this at all. “You’ve met Paulie and Hermes already, and Momma, and me. And Hades, of course.” Not much shyness in evidence there.

“Yes, Lady. But everyone all together…” She stops for a second, darts her eyes all around, and straightens, fingers clutched in a fold of her dress. “Besides, it ain’t the same. He’s our Lord, and you’re our Lady.”

If it warms her through, obeisance has been known to have that effect; it don’t pay to pay it no never mind. “You want I should tell one of the girls to bring a tray to your room?”

“Telling me where the girls eat would be enough of a kindness, Lady.” Oh, some moments Persie can see what her husband liked in this pale slip of a girl, what caught his eye and held his fancy. Spine straight and head held high even quaking with fear. Good. She’ll need it, sure as sunshine.

 

Dinner’s later than usual, even for them, even for Persephone’s dinner back. But she’s to blame, she’s sure, for not having told them in anything like enough time. Besides, it’s hard to complain when she’s sat on her Momma’s porch sipping elderberry wine and nibbling at stuffed vine-leaves, watching the sky dim to purple, grey, indigo. Slowly the stars come out, and her Momma bustles out in full rig and sends her in to dress. Persie spends spring and summer in shorts, shirts filched in other years from Uncle Don and Paulie, and a series of faded frocks, but this meal everyone shows up for in something approaching full regalia as closely as they wish to don for kinfolk. Her Momma’s wearing a dress the color of corn-silk that gleams against her dark skin, and there’s amber glinting in her ears and round her wrists: she looks the Lady of these lands, though Persie’s prone to thinking she looks that way in overalls or gingham pinafores.

The big cars start drawing up, filling the lane and field with angry mechanical rumbling while Persie’s putting her arms up to let the dress drop, fixing long earrings in her ears and debating perfunctorily about a fan. Home beneath she dresses for dinner most every night, it throws her sense off the first few days above, and year before last she wore pearls and carried an ostrich feather fan to dinner: took the whole six months for Missy to quit teasing her over it.

By the time she comes on down Uncle Zee and Rizzo are doing their damndest to make Momma’s spacious porch look like a toy thing, their heads near brushing the bougainvillea hanging down from the roof and their shoulders near brushing the walls. When she’s nearly at the foot of the stairs Missy sets hands on her waist and lifts her down the last couple. More strength in that girl than one would think, looking at her slim frame and delicate hands: swings Persie right off the steps and into an embrace, laughs up at her doing it.

“You’ve grown,” Persie says, touching the angle of her jaw, the line of her shoulder bared under the grey silk crossing it at an angle. “ _How_ in the world have you grown, _girl_?”

“It’s just her hair that’s taller,” Rizzo says, leaning in through the door, body tip-tilted. “Hey, girl, ain’t you a sight for the sorest eyes. Daddy, quit grumbling at the bushes and come say hullo to Persie.”

They’re some sight too, all the men in her life are, but these two, big as brick walls and stronger than reinforced steel, standing shoulder to shoulder smiling at her, it makes her heart turn right over. Never did have a Daddy herself, never known to miss him, or brothers either, not with her uncles and the parcel of cousins she’s got running all about. Uncle Zee tucks her right in, her chin barely up to his shoulder, and presses a gruff, whiskered kiss into her hair. Last man held her this way was Hades, and there’s only about five years between the two, with Uncle Don in-between, but the difference in the grip: Hades never fails to make her feel like she’s flying, Uncle Zee never fails to make her feel grounded. Little bit strange that, given the given, but it’s what it is, it’s why she takes Uncle Zee’s side in her head more often than not, never mind that she knows he’s done nothing but wrong a good long time now, leastaways when it comes to his marriage vows, and Auntie H’s the sort to take these things kinda seriously.

“Where’s Auntie?” she asks when he sets her at armslength, the better to look at her, and to make it seem a smidgeon more casual, tacks on, “And Paulie? Don’t tell me you and he ain’t surgically attached these days.”

Missy laughs. “He met Stu and got to yammering about cars; we’ll have to send a search party out sometime soon. Auntie Tia and Missus H are both in the kitchen. So’s little Hebe, though really she oughta be abed by now.”

“Not the day I come back,” Persie says smugly.

Uncle Zee laughs, runs one big hand over her neat hair, mussing it up considerably. “For Persephone we set our rules aside,” he agrees, big voice quiet.

“In Persephone we revel,” chimes in a voice from the driveway, and then Dio’s coming up the stairs with what looks like half the contents of his formidable wine-cellar: for a boy barely into his twenties Dio’s got a knack for finding and hoarding bottles Great-Granddaddy might’ve laid down; good skill and one that’s making Uncle Zee a whole load of money right about now, but not always one that’s very good for Dio, who was a sick child and had to be stuffed into an incubator when his Momma died, besides, and who’s enough a hard drinker to cause concern even in a family where a couple few bottles disappearing over dinner makes no never mind. Nothing to be done about it. Dio was her pet, and then she was gone, and he’s close to Paulie, but not always any too friendly, and Paulie’s got Missy and don’t either of them need nobody else, so there’s nothing Persie can do about it except pretend she doesn’t feel guilty and loaf around with him in the summer months and hug him good and tight when she meets him, let him wrap his arms around her and inhale the scent of her skin like she’s got a bouquet of fragrances to rival any wine.

“Limnio,” he says when she lets him go: no use pretending she wasn’t clutching on same as him. “A good year, the best pressing. My compliments on your casking.”

A false moment there, Dio’s eyes flashing as the wince she’s trying to suppress conveys itself to him through their hands still held fast.

Then Uncle Zee says, theatrically glum and shaking his great head, “Someday he’s gonna open his damn fool mouth and say that to Hades and that’ll be the end of peace and quiet and my retired life.”

“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to the wars we go,” Rizzo agrees, just like he hasn’t been in them since before he was big enough to withstand the vicious kick-back of a rifle.

Another false moment, while Dio looks between Rizzo and Missy with haunted eyes and Uncle Zee scowls out into the night. Second one in just about as many minutes. She’s come back too soon, is the trouble, and though they’ve brought spring on double quick for her in their hearts it’s still winter, snow not yet beginning to thaw.

“C’mon,” Dio urges, free hand wrapped around her elbow, “we’ll go stick these in the ice-box and annoy Missus H some.”

 

The kitchen in this house, in all their houses, is a sacred thing: the fire always burning, always tended, something always being baked or stewed or fried or roasted on it. Right now there’s a kettle of soup hung over a low fire, filling the kitchen with the smell of chicken broth simmering with sage, basil; and a half-dozen mason jars open on the counter nearest the ice-box redolent with olives pickling in their own oil, with lemon and garlic and white wine vinegar and the strangely cloying non-smell of fresh milk.

Only Auntie Tia there, stooping over the soup and scooping some up in a ladle big enough to be called a bowl with a handle affixed, smelling it and sipping at it and frowning something awful.

“Hebe,” she says, and sure enough a head pops right up from behind the tea-service resting in state beside the sink, “child c’mon here and tell me what’s gone wrong with this soup.”

Hebe’s about eight, or a little younger. Persie remembers Auntie H being pregnant right about the time she’d gone beneath the first time: big gap between her and her brothers, though she’s got half-siblings lined up till a lot closer’n the two decades clear between her and Rizzo, her and Stu, who were both had in the years-long honeymoon just after her uncles had established their territories. Still, even Hermes is eight full years older, and Dio another six or thereabouts. Yeah, she’s seven and change, right about now, can’t be any younger, eighth spring Persie’s coming back for and Auntie H had barely begun showing when she left. Pert little thing, brown limbs flashing as she scampers her way around the many tables and counters and free-standing stoves that dot the kitchen right up to Auntie Tia to take a sip of the soup, screw her eyes shut and frown and shrug her shoulders.

“Might be I could take a guess?”

Auntie Tia, who she could’ve sworn hadn’t known Persie was standing quiet in the shadows, nods and looks straight at her. “C’mon up and take your chances. And you, vagabond, stick those bottles in and go make nice.”

“Salt,” Persie says after a taste. “Ain’t near enough salt in here.”

“Tasted right fine to me,” Hebe says with a stubborn little pout.

“That’s because you’ve rotted your palate with sweet tea,” Auntie Tia says, and passes Persie an approving glance. “Go on out and run errands for your mother and take this boy with you. Persie, if it ain’t too much trouble, could you stay and look over the soup? I got lamb that needs tending to.”

Persie says, “Sure, Auntie,” and grabs an apron down from its hook and stoops over the kettle of soup, adding salt and ground-up pepper and strips of capsicum and dribbles of milk and mostly just smelling the fragrant steam that comes coiling up.

Presently Momma and Auntie H come bustling in from out in the yard, trailed by Hebe carrying a tureen of sauce and Dio and Paulie, snagged from the drive-way, hauling along what looks like most of a calf. Momma goes right on through, but Auntie H just shifts her load to one hip and gathers Persie up in her free arm for a quick squeeze.

“You come on up and visit us when it gets too hot to be here on the plains. And remember I asked you before Don did. You too, Tia, be a break for you after dealing with Dio all winter; Paulie’ll make do for a week or two without you just fine.”

“We were thinking of going hunting anyhow,” Missy says, sticking her head and then her body in through the door. “Addy and Ditty just got here. Drove part of the way with Uncle Don, so even he’ll be here soon enough. You want I should take that, Missus H?”

“I have it. Start setting out the table. You coming, Persie?”

“Got Rizzo and Stu at it, Auntie Terry watching them; I’ll just help Persie out with the soup, bit big to carry on her own.”

Auntie H shrugs and leaves, taking Hebe with her as she goes. Missy comes right in, tugging an apron over her dress the way everyone’s been doing, and helps Persie struggle the full kettle off the hob and onto a counter while they wait for Auntie Tia to taste everything once before it goes on through.

“Ain’t fair how she treats you,” Persie mutters.

“Ain’t fair how Daddy went right ahead and catted around to the extent of producing so many of us without reference to her. She’s okay with Dio and Addy, rest of us ain’t looking for a Momma.”

“How Miss Lettie doing? I oughta have asked before.”

You’ve had a thousand things going, hush. Momma’s just fine, happy with how we’re going, be happier if Paulie’d stop bringing home a stream of girls or I’d stop hunting off every man showed interest in me.”

“Ain’t that gonna happen,” Persie grins, and then sobers fast. “Yes, Auntie?”

Auntie Tia, an army of serving-women at her back laden with vessels, is glaring at them both something awful. “Get outta my way and go gossip somewhere that’s not blocking my route to the food, girls.”

“Thought we could carry the soup,” Persie begins and trails off and gets outta the way when Auntie Tia just glares at her some more.

 

Outside the porch and hallway are deserted, and there are voices murmuring in the dining-room, two doors down. The night is chilly, yet, and Persie, just out of the boiling kitchen and her apron, shivers in her pomegranate silk, her bare shoulders prickling. Should’ve thought to drape a shawl, or at least should get outta the wind now that’s sharp enough to bring tears to unsuspecting eyes. The farm stretches out to the back, wind whistling through fields as yet empty, the ground thawing now she’s come, and to the front there are the set and patterned gardens, where it’s breaking against the trees: where it’s howling. There is a car in the distance, somewhere in the long ribbon of road sketched out by pinpricks of light, and closer to home are the sweet smells of petroleum from the cars of her kin, and the night-blooming flowers stretching their petals into the darkness.

Persephone’s home.


	3. Chapter 3

Spring sprawls the way it always does. Persie wakes early of a morning, helps out in the kitchen garden and coaxes flowers into bloom, more and more every day, picks fruit that’s ripe and trims back branches, wanders into the kitchen to steal honey and has her knuckles rapped by whoever’s in charge of shooing children away, sets to work in the fields helping with the planting, sits a time or two in the diner and gives away free cups of coffee to anyone who asks. In the afternoons she visits with her cousins or goes wandering on her own: more or less she takes Minty along with her, work or play, to keep her company and from bothering Momma, who for sure knows something’s afoot and on the best day would like nothing better than a chance to skewer Hades through and through. Cook him, maybe, there’s a fire-pit can roast a whole bull; or just chop him up fine and grind his bones for fertilizer and pour his fine blood at the root of the apple tree.

It’s nicer than she’d’ve thought it’d be, having a companion. Up above she mostly goes about with her cousins, has never had much time to tangle herself in human lives save as her Momma’s obedient adjunct; down beneath it’s a different story, but she ain’t got much by way of staff. Minty effaces herself to perfection, comes when called, fetches and carries and stays put and occupies herself with something or the other. It’s perfect, does a lot to ease the ache at the base of her throat when she looks at the girl, to have her so quiet, so biddable: girl like that ain’t no danger at all. More and more she’s understanding why Missy and Paulie and Dio and all have their own little coteries, family’s all well and good and you stand by your blood cause they’re all you got when all’s said and done, but it’s just _nice_ to have someone who looks to you for orders and dances to your tune.

Two weeks in Rizzo hauls her off to the shooting-range to make sure she’s kept her hand in. The rest of them hunt in the autumn and over winter, but all she’s done with a gun, these nine years, is aim at a paper target while Rizzo fusses over her stance. First day out it’s always a struggle to keep her arms the way they ought to be, her feet, her breath, the curve of her shoulder. Eventually he gets annoyed and simply moves her the way he wants her, and keeps a grip on her while she’s empties the first clip, loosening right up with every shot, putting the pullets closer and closer to the heart of the thing. It looks like a man.

“Good show,” Rizzo says presently, and before she can so much as smile, let alone gloat, adds sternly, “I’ll come fetch you couple days every week while you’re here, maybe shoot some pig when I’m confident you can do more than make it angry. Dio’s got a drove rooting up his vines.”

“Missy won’t like it.”

“Missy’ll be the one telling us all what to do, where and in what order, moment she’s got a weapon in her hands. Early for it, but they’re a nuisance and will spread if we wait till autumn. Enough for the day, c’mon. Miss, you want a turn?”

Minty’s been standing quiet all this while, smiling every time Persie catches her eye. Drive over Rizzo’d said hullo and proceeded to ignore her same as he would one of Paulie singers or Dio’s actors, but now he watches her closely while they head on back; treats them to lunch and watches every bite she eats: only time he’s not looking at Minty he’s looking at Persie herself. Be surprising from anyone, but the only people Rizzo talks to are Addy’s soldiers and more often than not because he’s aiming to poach them. By the time they get home Minty’s jittery, drawn into herself and looking nowhere but at her own two feet, worse than she was coming up above with Persie, clearly longing to get away: moment they draw to a halt she’s outta the car, dropping a hasty curtsy and then simply gone, haring over the garden path and ducking round to the back of the house where the other girls live.

Rizzo watches her go, face impassive, then reaches over to hold the door shut so Persie can’t get out from beside him. “You’re a mite older than me and you’ve married a long time, so I thought I’d wait and see for myself before I ran my mouth, and you can tell me to mind my own business but just _what_ are you doing with that girl?”

“She’s never been up above so I thought I’d bring her; she’s gonna try and find a job.”

“So you’ve been telling us,” he agrees affably. “Two weeks that girl’s been around, ain’t none of us so much as seen you without her tailing around, and how many jobs has she looked for, if that’s why she’s here having come all the way up from beneath?”

“It ain’t like jobs are low-hanging fruit just waiting to be plucked. I’ll talk to Paulie soon, he was talking about hearing her play.”

“You do that. I’ll tell him he oughta give this girl special consideration, everything she wants, bump the wages up a little, shoo off any contenders, the whole works. And then you oughta forget about her some and just enjoy your time here with family, cause I know for a fact that Momma and Daddy would like to have you visit for a bit, and same with the rest of us from Auntie Tia on down. And because, sure you know your husband better’n anyone except maybe Daddy and Auntie Terry, and I don’t rightly speaking know him all that well, but my dread uncle doesn’t seem to me the style of man who looks with a kind eye upon his wife straying simply because she’s doing it with a girl.”

That just about knocks her to the ground. For a moment she’s sure he’s making a joke or trying to tell her he knows but Rizzo’s got less sense of humor than any of them except Stu, and he’s sitting looking stern and sincere and just a little bit worried. When she opens her mouth to blurt out a denial or laugh hysterically, he puts up a hand to silence her, says, “I’m no judge of folks like Dio or Ditty, but remember I’m very good at knowing when a body lies; couldn’t do the work I do without that.”

“Rizzo, I’m not having an affair with her, or anyone else. Don’t be a fool.”

Something in her face must quieten him, because he grins at her. “Alright. We worry. You come home early, you never go places without that girl, you never tell anyone why you came on up beyond saying you miss us which is sweet but untrue. You gonna tell us what happened?”

“Sure,” Persie says, smiles big. “I missed you. Didn’t miss the interrogating. Let me out.” Rizzo moves his hand obligingly, leans all the way back to the other side, sketches her a little bow when she’s climbed out and is shutting the door.

When she gets to the porch and looks back he’s still there, still watching.

 

We worry, Rizzo says, and things fall in place. First few days back, everyone does tend to hang onto her some like she’ll disappear if they don’t have a hand or an eye on her and she’s been thinking it’s just some more of that, compounded with the surprise of having her back early. But she ought have guessed: her Momma comes and wakes her up mornings and spends them with her and asks where she’s going and when she’ll be back and smiles big when she chooses to stay at home and they have dinner together most nights jut the two of them and it’s all cozy, but they haven’t talked, not really, not about anything real, anything but family gossip. Usually they get the heavy things outta the way first: what she’s been doing, and whether either of them needs any help, and how their people have been, and what needs doing right away and what can wait till summer. Persie’s been helping out since she was infant, learned to walk out in those fields, to count by measuring out parcels of seed, and this year nothing, no lack of love neither, but no business, like her Momma’s giving her all the space and time to get over herself, come to a decision, ask for help.

Ain’t nothing she can do about it except try and act like there’s nothing wrong with her except the shock of coming back home. Next morning she gets up and pulls on some shorts and ties her braid up into a knot and goes down to drag the accounts out of hiding and pesters Momma about them over breakfast. Doesn’t soften her up too much, but the only way to do something well is to keep doing it. Couple days later she’s haranguing Persie about tax evasions and seed-crop value and which fertilizer they should buy just the same as every year. Helps that she’s stopped hanging about Minty quite as much, and she’s busy enough it doesn’t cause her any pangs of guilt, though it does give her pause, thinking she ought to feel guilty; it isn’t exactly an emotion she’s too familiar with, except for the time she ran right off and didn’t bother to leave a note.

Week after planting’s done she fixes up to meet Paulie at his club, and sure as sunshine they’ve convened in full strength, scattered around like they’ve just happened to drop by, when Dio’s nearly falling asleep on the table and Ditty’s looking here there and everywhere, clearly bored. Rizzo’s sitting at the back near the door, arms crossed over his chest and long legs blocking the way, talking to Addy, who doesn’t seem to be disliking what she hears: there’s a family bet that someday those two will decide they really do like each other and then everyone else had better watch out, but if it hasn’t happened yet with them sharing crib and bottle practically, what with Addy being the only one of Uncle Zee’s kids Auntie H has ever truly taken to heart, well then there doesn’t seem to be much risk of it; too alike, is the problem, and her just that edge more ethical, or at any rate more aware of how to turn laws to her own advantage where Rizzo just trusts to his red right hand. Paulie’s chatting with a boy who’s in all likelihood the singer he’s been raving about on and off, and Missy’s chatting up the girl who’s hovering undecidedly around him.

Minty, coming in tardily, checks a little at the sight of her audience, but comes on bravely. Under the light coat which she sheds is the green dress she’d had on back in Cocytus, that first night, which shows to greater effect in the dusty sunlight in Muse than under the fluorescent lights down beneath: she looks like a wild thing that’s wandered in from the fields, and Hermes emerges as if called out from some dim and dusty crevice with a guitar in hand to smile beatifically at her and show her to the piano before leaning against it himself, strumming lightly.

They go like a dream, the two of them, Minty and the boy, his girl and Hermes occasionally pitching in for vocal or instrumental accompaniment but mostly looking on with the intelligent regard of craftsmen for a masterpiece. They start out simple, tunes that most everybody can sing and everybody dances to, getting the feel of each other, then start showing off two songs in, filling up the room with song, each pausing to let the other really stretch and then hurrying to catch up, her fingers and his voice both going quick and deep, intricate bits of melody sinking into waiting ears. By the time they finish they’re both glowing, gasping.

Paulie, who’s been listening with his eyes closed and his body straining from his seat towards the stage, leaps on up and tucks the boy into an arm, ruffling his curls with the other hand. Minty gets a firm handclasp and a blistering smile, and then he’s pulling the boy off-stage, talking rapidly and with many gestures. Persie doesn’t pretend to follow: she can hold a tune with the best of them, but the technicalities of music are well lost on her.

Instead she gestures Minty into Paulie’s empty seat and puts a hand on her trembling shoulder.

“My Lady,” Minty says and looks around herself a touch helplessly. “My Lady. I would thank you.”

“You can thank me when you’ve got the job,” Persie says. “Here, put on your coat, you’re shivering.”

“It isn’t cold, it’s fear. It doesn’t matter whether I get taken up here. To play like that, for someone who sings like that… I’ve never heard anyone sing so well.”

“Nor ever will,” Dio says, picking his face up off the table and looking around, eyes awfully alert for someone who was snoring not too long ago. “He’s Paulie’s favorite, been training him a good while now, says he can look right into you and sing you desires you didn’t know you had.” He smiles beatifically and adds, “I’d ask for an audience with him if I were you, cousin. A private one, of course.”

Of course it’s Dio started the rumor, like as not in hopes of getting her to tell him what the real trouble is. She reaches out and jabs her nails hard into his hand under the guise of patting it, but he only smiles at her. Drunk already, and really does nobody take care of the boy while she’s gone? But that’s unfair to Auntie Tia, who’s just now gone up to stay with Uncle Zee after spending winter with Dio. Spring and summer she’s supposed to loaf around with him and keep him from getting sloshed more than a couple times a week, pour the moonshine into handy streams and lock away the expensive hooch. She’s been falling down on the job, on all her jobs, not been a good daughter, cousin, kin, too busy still being a wife in her own mind. It’s spring out in the green world, if it’s winter in their hearts, in hers, it’s only her to blame. She rubs a rueful thumb over his hand and her heart turns right over when he looks at her with some surprise, but all he says is, “I think Paulie’s calling for you.”

Paulie looks like he’s spent every one of the last five minutes with his hands stuck right into his hair where they are right now, and fixes her with a glare that pins her to her place while he stalks around looking steadily more deranged. After a full minute he says, “You want this girl to have the job.”

“That didn’t sound to me like a question.”

“It isn’t. You want her to have the job she can have the job. But you’re not to hang about _Sol_ reminding Orpheus that your influence cost his girl the gig; it’ll make it difficult for your girl to work with him and he’ll come to resent her and then me and that’s about the last thing I want.”

“Don’t give her the job if you’d rather not,” she says coolly. If Minty’s gotta stay with her, well, that’s no hardship, really, she’d quite like to keep an eye on the girl. “You don’t gotta do me any favors.”

“I’m not doing you a favor, or any more of one than I’d be doing Orpheus; him I like but you’re one of mine. But you’ve gotta stay away, you understand, just go and don’t come back, leastaways for a while, till they’ve got settled in. I don’t want to lose this boy.”

He looks so earnest it makes her grin over her indignation that he should be trying to order her around. When he glares she raises her hands palms out and says, “I’m going, I’m going, you’d think none of you wanted me up here, rate you keep talking. Hush, I know you don’t mean that.” She smoothes his hair down, takes his face between her hands and kisses his brow. “I’m going away right now, you tell her she’s got the job.”

 

She goes all the way away, a day-long drive with Dio and Hermes switching places behind the wheel, to stay with Uncle Don, which is the most relaxing ten days she can remember for a good long time, cause Uncle Don don’t care about the state of her heart or her nerves or really anything except whether she remembers to sail, leaves her be when he’s satisfied she knows what she’s doing and won’t come to harm. She swims and sails and surfs and mostly just lazes at the water-line letting the surf pound up over her. Some nights she goes to the fishing-cove to help unload the boats that’ve snuck in using the darkness as a cover: a strange catch of glass bottles and guns. Some mornings she goes with him in a car filled with crates to talk to hard-faced men, mostly young, who eye her with dread. Nights they dine on fried mackerel flaking off the bone and dressed with lemon juice, cuttlefish cooked in a rich tomato sauce, squid sun-dried and grilled, baked sea-bass and sword-fish, tuna steaks marinated in olive oil and dressed with olives, and prodigious amounts of ouzo; during the day she goes diving for sea urchins and eats them raw, and mussels in the shell.

 

By the time she returns Dio’s wilting away from lack of attention, and latches onto her like a lamprey, taking her everywhere and telling her everything. Third day out he tells her he’s in love and by the afternoon of the fourth she’s met the girl. Quiet little thing with a core to her of iron and bronze, ran away from home and got dumped by her boyfriend, is working for Dio managing his vineyards , is in awe of him which Persie disapproves of but can understand well enough it starts an ache in her, but for all the stars in her eyes isn’t slavish about it. And really if there’s anyone in the family she’ll trust with a bruised young girl it’s Dio. Doesn’t hurt that he’s in love with her, stars in his eyes and a smile flickering and growing every time he so much as looks at her, mentions her before and after Persie’s met her, is thinking marriage for all that Dio of all of them knows how this thing usually goes between one of them and people who don’t know enough or too much or don’t fear them or do. It’s the sweetest thing, he looks happy and young and so eager to talk about her all the time: Paulie’s started sticking fingers in his ears every time Dio’s anywhere near him, and Rizzo just clamps a hand over his mouth and holds till he surrenders. Ditty hears him out every time, fawns over him some and offers advice and positively _gloats_. Even Persie’s Momma, who has very little patience with people acting like fools and with Dio in general, thaws enough to not whack him upside the head every time he opens his mouth and says _Ariadne_.

It makes Persie’s breath catch short, the heart pound in her chest, her mouth dry up. She’s made her peace with it, some, but oh how it stings to see someone fall in love in front of her eyes, growing giddy with it, feeding off it like ambrosia. It would be easier if she weren’t aching for Hades, if Ditty’s eyes didn’t rest knowingly on her every time they’re in the same room just for minute before skittering off, if her Momma wasn’t avoiding saying his name scrupulously or if the others weren’t. Might be they’ve stopped thinking she’s stepping out on him, but sure as sunshine they know something’s the matter and they’re being cautious about it, so careful, well maybe Momma isn’t and is instead just happy to be thinking that Persie’s probably home for good, but the cousins are watching what they say and she can practically see Rizzo’s red right hand reining them in, and she’s grateful so grateful it’s pathetic that they aren’t talking about the half of her life she doesn’t seem to have properly paused but which is instead haunting, hunting, hounding her like Cereberus with all the heads scenting her out, like Argus all-seeing looking into her heart and stripping her secrets out from their dark places.

                                                                                                     

Kate visits her in mid-summer, contriving to be cool in her stern blacks under the sweltering sun, where everyone but Paulie permanently looks as though they’re about to bake or melt into a puddle of sweat, and Persie’s heart leaps treacherously.

“Tell him,” she says, moment she can get Kate away from the rest of them, after greeting all around and queries about where she’s been and where she’s going and who she’s meeting and what she’s doing for them and can anyone help with whatever it is it’s no trouble to call one of the boys they’re mostly just loafing around and will she come by on her way back to stay awhile or at least eat with them, “tell him that I… that he…”

“Child,” Kate says, stops her with a hand laid carefully on her arm: Kate’s always careful with her touches, never profligate with embraces or the sort of kiss her family hands out so easily. “I’m nobody’s errand girl, I don’t _do_ messages.”

“You’ve helped my mother find me,” she tries. It isn’t something she’s proud of, in the usual way she doesn’t like to speak about that time, those months when she was moving from child to woman never knowing she would always be running back and forth like the shuttle weaving her life’s thread out into the same patterns again and again, never changing, but with everyone tiptoeing around her and now Dio deliriously in love she’s been longing for her husband something terrible.

“Your mother and I have a longer friendship by far than the length of your life,” Kate points out, and then lets the smile twitching at the corner of her mouth stretch. “Very well, one message. What is it, child?”

“Tell him,” she says, intending only to convey her love or her longing for him and then knowing suddenly what it is she wants to say, “that autumn may start this year early, as spring began.”


End file.
